


A Beautiful Snuff Box

by Verabird



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Other, started as crack, the reason why will shock you, turned into angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 21:28:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14029122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verabird/pseuds/Verabird
Summary: It served him dutifully to the last.





	A Beautiful Snuff Box

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Terra for suggesting this and then daring me to write it. Whoops.

It was a beautiful snuff box. Its edges of swirling silver were opulence akin to the finest gilt ballroom in Paris, shining and elegant with a complex hook fastening crafted with sumptuous care; it was the finest thing Javert owned.

Had it not been a gift, pressed into his hand along with a proud smile from his patron, Javert would not have kept it. The snuff box was too magnificent for his tastes, too rich and offensive for a small town Inspector to carry in his pocket. Yet a simple and beautiful ‘J’ was carved across the lid, and so no one else but Javert could have need for such a thing.

Long days walking the muddy streets of Montreuil were saved by peaceful evenings in front of the brilliant light of the fire, his boots drying on the grate, and the snuff box spinning smoothly in his hand. He’d stroke the soft silver - and it was almost a pure silver and therefore smooth - and consider his day. Javert would feel wrung through at the hands of his little society that he attempted to cultivate into lawfulness, but with the snuff box in his left hand he felt calm, and as his thumb and forefinger dipped into the miraculous substance within he felt peace.

Snuff was a luxury he allowed himself on occasion. It was a special moment to sit before the fire and stroke his silver box and then partake of the tobacco within. A rare ritual, yet an important one for Javert. The silver was warm beneath his fingers and the ornate patterns set in the metal felt sensitive beneath his fingertips. He stroked his snuff box delicately for within there was a delicacy. He had never, he would never, touch anything else with quite the same reverence.

Javert’s snuff box served him graciously. He took great care of it, and it in turn took great care of him. In Paris many years later he would think of a man who consumed his thoughts, confused his senses, and the snuff box would call to him, and with dazzling precision he could dull those stormy senses. The snuff box worked with him to calm him, soothe him, replace carelessness with rigor, inexactness with a heightened meticulousness.

Foolish though the thought was, he carried his snuff box to the barricade, hidden in an inside pocket. As he lay at peace on the table in the tap room where passionate rebellious dreams caught fire he felt at ease. Hard against his breast he could sense the particular silver of his trusted snuff box, there to serve him, there to protect. He would ask for a last sniff when the time came.

Several hours later the snuff box was falling. It was falling continuously, deep, strenuous, falling at speed, until suddenly it was submerged in the savage current of the Seine. Dutiful to the end, the snuff box burned a hole in Javert’s watery chest, before slipping from his coat and floating slowly down until it landed with the slightest of thuds on the stone bottom of the river.

The sight of a forgotten snuff box somberly left on a dead man’s shelf might be sorrowful, but there is a special kind of lugubrious poignancy to a snuff box resting at the bottom of a river. Its master swept away, its silver tarnished by the acid waters where the filth of Paris collects. Water quickly seeped into the hinges of the snuff box soaking the beloved contents within, and in time it would rust, the ‘J’ smoothed over by erosion. Another forgotten piece of the past, but it did its duty, it gave a small amount of pleasure to an Inspector for a short while, and what more can be expected of a beautiful snuff box.


End file.
